DBMS > Cassandra vs. Derby vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. InfluxDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Derby vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. InfluxDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

DBMS for storing time series, events and metrics

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Document store

Key-value store
Wide column store

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS

with GEO package

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	4.71
Rank	#69	Overall
	#37	Relational DBMS

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	3.26
Rank	#92	Overall
	#13	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	25.83
Rank	#28	Overall
	#1	Time Series DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

db.apache.org/derby

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

cloud.google.com/bigtable

www.influxdata.com/products/influxdb-overview

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

db.apache.org/derby/manuals/index.html

firebase.google.com/docs/database

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

docs.influxdata.com/influxdb

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Apache Software Foundation

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Initial release

2008

1997

2012

2015

2013

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

10.17.1.0, November 2023

2.7.6, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

MIT-License; commercial enterprise version available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

Linux
OS X

through Homebrew

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Numeric data and Strings

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

JDBC

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

HTTP API
JSON over UDP

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java Stored Procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Sharding

in enterprise version only

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Source-replica replication

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

selectable replication factor

in enterprise version only

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

yes

Atomic single-row operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Depending on used storage engine

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

simple rights management via user accounts

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

InfluxData is the creator of InfluxDB , the open source time series database. It...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Time to Value InfluxDB is available in all the popular languages and frameworks,...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

IoT & Sensor Monitoring Developers are witnessing the instrumentation of every available...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

InfluxData has more than 1,900 paying customers, including customers include MuleSoft,...
» more

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Fastest-growing database to drive 27,500 GitHub stars Over 750,000 daily active instances
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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Open source core with closed source clustering available either on-premise or on...
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